On to Ibiza

Yesterday's big winds were a good check of our new weather sources. The UK Met Office forecast was pretty accurate, and John has subscribed so that we get them by e-mail and don't have to connect at a fixed time as you must for NavTex. He has also extended the days out on our grib files so that we'll get five days now and can plan the big jumps from island to island. We tried the German weather service, but their broadcast seemed to go on forever. The part we're interested in was at the beginning, but we couldn't figure out how to save the file so that we could go back to it. It's in a different format (RTTY) than we've used before.

While we were on anchor alert yesterday, we also started looking for our next stops. We want to visit Ibiza city (Eivissa), and there's an anchorage shown in the guide and on our charts that is within the harbor. Diane from Argonaut said last year, though, that there were "no anchoring" signs up everywhere in the harbor, so we'll see. There are also a couple of anchorages just east around the point. They're less protected from the swell, but from where we're sitting now, the swell seems to be coming from the west, so they might be OK.

I've been using Diane's blog from last year as a supplement to our cruising guides and charts. It's been very helpful, and it had much to do with choosing our first anchorage here at Espalmador. Thanks, Diane! Our experience in early May, however, is much different from theirs in mid September. The water is still too cold to swim in, for one thing. And the sand doesn't look pink on a gray day.

At anchor on Ibiza: It took us 2 hours and 40 minutes to get from Espalmador to our current anchorage at Cala Talamanca, just east of Eivissa. We saw the no anchoring signs on the jetty for the harbor, and since no boats were in the anchorage across from the signs, we decided it probably wasn't allowed. It would have been subject to wakes from passing boats anyway. Cala Talamanca is around the corner, and the guide says it's a 20-minute walk into town from here. We saw a German slip around the northwest corner of the bay in his dinghy, so we're hoping for a secure dinghy landing there.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com